[EM] Defeat Strength

[robert bristow-johnson]

On the street with my phone, so I'm terse...(Interspersed)Powered by Cricket Wireless------ Original message------From: Kristofer MunsterhjelmDate: Fri, Sep 9, 2022 4:16 PMTo: robert bristow-johnson;jamesgilmour at f2s.com;EM;Cc: Subject:Re: [EM] Defeat StrengthOn 09.09.2022 18:42, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 09/09/2022 12:16 PM EDT James Gilmour 
>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> In an STV-PR election (a.k.a. RCV), the voter's second and any
>> subsequent preferences are contingency choices, to be used only in 
>> the contingency that the voter's first choice candidate cannot be
>> elected (because of lack of support) or has already been elected to
>> represent a full quota of voters (and so does not need the
>> additional support).
>> 
> 
> But James, we know that that is not always the case.  Burlington 2009
> and now, Alaska 2022, are counter-examples that disprove that.
> 
> In Burlington 2009, Kurt Wright voters were promised (as we all were
> promised) that if their first-choice cannot win, their second-choice
> vote is counted.  Wright was defeated and those voters' second-choice
> votes were not counted.  Had their second-choice votes been counted,
> a different candidate for mayor would have been elected.

As I understand it, James considers an IRV ballot to be a kind of 
program instruction, so that e.g. voting A>B>C is a way of telling the 
voting method "I want my ballot to count towards A until he's 
eliminated; then I want my ballot to count towards B until/unless he's 
eliminated, etc".>>> and my point is, if we're fair, we can't define "eliminated" in a conveniently parochial way that suits our product instead of being consistent.
 From such a perspective there is no failure because the voters gave the 
method certain instructions, and the method obeyed these instructions, 
and the winner was who was elected since that's what the procedure says.

If I understand that right, then there's no promise of a vote counting 
towards B if A can't win, >>> there certainly is.  I quoted Howard Dean saying that.  I think FairVote says that explicitly.because B could be eliminated before A and so 
the ballot skips directly from A to C. Which leads to Condorcet failure, nonmonotonicity, and so on.>>> What difference does that make to the voter who is promised "Vote your hopes, not your fears."?>>> They are saying on their ballot "I am directing my vote to go for my fav A, but if my fav is defeated, then I am directing my vote to go to my fall back B."
Since IRV passes both LNHarm and LNHelp, the procedural interpretation 
does happen to coincide with the (method-independent) idea that unranked 
candidates should be considered to rank below every explicitly ranked 
candidate, because that's the effect not ranking candidates has on the 
method. But if the method were different, the procedural interpretation 
would also come to a different conclusion.

(However, I don't think the procedural interpretation is particularly 
common; at least it isn't how IRV has been sold.)

-km
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